I’m tweaking my Technology in the Language Arts Curriculum course for the fall and would like to crowdsource some of the changes. I’ll be doing the course online this semester, which will likely change some of the assignments a little–more discussion boards, blog posts, and other “small” products–but I am also tying to think about (a) new tools for classroom use and (b) meta-level issues related to tech in the classroom. Some of this may involve more detailed discussions of big data and user surveillance, for example, but I may also do some discussion of crowdsourcing as a phenomenon (and to try to think about what that might mean for the classroom). I’ll likely drop the unit on gamification (unless someone can convince me of its necessity) and may cut social bookmarking (or just teach it via Pinterest). I’d appreciate any suggestions about readings or tools that I should consider adding to my syllabus. My current weekly schedule is below the fold:

From what I’ve seen so far, John Oliver’s HBO show is brilliantly funny and insightful. This monologue on net neutrality is a perfect example of his ability to show why an arcane concept like net neutrality matters and why some of its biggest advocates are struggling to communicate this to a wider audience. The entire thirteen minutes is worth your time and Oliver even directs his audience on how to become involved in this issue by leaving comments on the FCC website.

In case you missed them elsewhere, here are a couple of recent publications where I discuss my Introduction to Film and Visual Literacy course, which I have revamped into a class focusing on documentary ethics In the course, students watch documentaries, and we discuss them, in part, in relationship to ethical principles. The course also includes a service-learning component, in which my students create short documentaries about a local community group. Here are the articles:

“Using Video Annotation Tools to Teach Film Analysis,” Profhacker, June 2, 2014. This article focuses specifically on a video annotation tool I was able to try out, Social Book. The tool allows students to comment direct;y on specific scenes within a film. It also makes it easy to locate student comments by going to their avatar on a timer bar.

These HBO Go advertisements are both very funny and incredibly perceptive about the dynamics of TV watching and family togetherness.They also make me want to revisit an essay I wrote for Screen several years ago (it came out in 2012, but most of the ads I discussed were from 2010 or so) about the ways in which portable media platforms have been marketed to audiences as a means of promoting family harmony through individualized consumption.

All of the ads mock the discomfort that parents and children feel when watching provocative, mostly sexual, content, whether explicit sex on Lena Dunham’s Girls and references to homosexuality on Game of Thrones. By showing this discomfort, they remind viewers (especially teenagers and young adults living at home) of the benefits of watching these shows alone–on personal devices such as laptops, iPads, or even cell phones–rather than viewing them on the main TV in the home. If TV advertisements in the past promoted family harmony through shared viewing experiences, these advertisements seem to suggest a new family harmony through avoiding the shared discomfort of watching a scene from Game of Thrones with your mom in which two women make out.

They also serve as a not-so-subtle reminder that HBO the primary source of provocative TV content, producing the shows you want to watch, just not with your parents.

Some of my blog posts over the years, including my reviews of The Adventures of Tintin and Munich have been republished in a neat e-book anthology called The Take2 Guide to Steven Spielberg. I’m in good company here with Jonthan Rosenbaum, Matt Zoller Seitz, and dozens of others also included. The series editor John Pruzanski has also been working on several other volumes for a series of e-books on movie directors, so hopefully there will be more to come.

My social media feeds are practically overflowing with references to the second season of the hit Netflix series House of Cards, many of them assessing the show’s realism (or at least fidelity to recent political events) and its mechanics for maintaining suspense (we know Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood will succeed; the pleasure is in seeing how he manages to do so). The show doesn’t just confirm our perception of Washington as hopelessly corrupt, it revels in that. The show has prompted readings that identify it as feminist, while Alyssa Rosenberg identifies a far more problematic depiction of gender politics.

But even more attention has been paid (and more digital ink spilled) focusing on what the success of House of Cards means for the future of television. One of the best assessments comes from Matthew Yglesias, who offers a pretty insightful analysis of the structural aspects of the entertainment industry that currently favor Netflix over its chief competition, HBO (arguments that are not unlike some of the points Max Dawson and I raised in our essay, “Streaming U: College Students and Connected Viewing“). Yglesias points out that Netflix benefits from several key advantages over HBO: first, it’s significantly cheaper than HBO, especially for cordcutters who are not paying for a cable television subscription, and as Dawson and I argue, a large proportion of college students fall into this category. If college students are habituated into subscribing to Netflix, those habits may carry over after graduation. In fact, Yglesias astutely diagnoses that users are often likely to share HBO Go passwords (although this also happens with Netflix). Finally, Yglesias, like pretty much everyone else points out that Netflix has also tapped into the pleasures of binge watching by releasing all episodes of a “season” simultaneously, a technique that rewards the kinds of intense viewing that many fans have embraced.

This emphasis on binge watching has provoked a number of essays attempting to define binge watching and addressing whether or not the practices of binging are harmful or not. Nolan Feeney of The Atlantic offers an elaborate taxonomy of binge watching, detailing everything from how many episodes have to be watched to call it “binging” to whether binging is a harmful activity. Others, like Slate’s Emma Roller, defend the practices of binge watching by suggesting that it encourages more attentive viewing (Slate’s Alex Soojung-Kim Pang also defends binging). But the implication throughout is that our on-demand culture allows us immediate, intense, inexpensive, and uninterrupted access to texts that inspire passionate discussion.

That said, there may be some complicating factors that dislodge Netflix’s “disruptive” distribution model. As Gizmodo’s Leslie Horn reports, broadband caps that limit the amount of data that consumers can use in a given month are becoming more widespread (and with the imminent merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, likely to become even more common). According to Harris’s calculations, a particularly avid binge watcher consuming movies in high-definition, as Netflix and Amazon deliver them, is likely to use her entire data allotment in the course of a single weekend (the data costs for avid gamers would be even worse). This potentially makes Netflix a more expensive alternative than a basic cable subscription with HBO added on. The future of streaming could follow a number of different directions, but it’s important to note that this mode of consumption may prove to be a temporary form that is upset by any number of technological, political, and economic forces. In the future, we may binge-watch the old-fashioned way: on DVD.

To follow up my post on my junior seminar, I’ll quickly add a copy of my course schedule for my Introduction to Film course. In the English department, we have adapted the Intro course so that it will fit into the “ethics and civic engagement” competency for the new core curriculum here at Fayetteville State. With that in mind, I’ve reinvented the course to address issues of documentary ethics and to include a required service learning project in which students make a 6-7 minute documentary about a local community organization (last semester it was Fayetteville Urban Ministry; this semester, it’s the local chapter of the American Red Cross). Last semester was very much a “beta test” for the class, in that I had never taught anything like this. It ended up working out pretty well, but I’ve learned a few things that I can write up later if anyone is interested. Students will also be required to write a paper addressing an ethical concern related to documentary. For now, below the fold, is our weekly schedule.

I’ve been out of the loop for the last few weeks, but several people have requested that I post my syllabus for my junior seminar, “Primetime Politics,” which focuses on representations of Washington D.C., in Hollywood films and TV series. Obviously there is way too much out there to cover, especially in a junior level course, so I decided to focus on a few major strains: historical films (and some documentaries) depicting actual presidents or public figures; backstage narratives that look at the behind the scenes aspects of DC culture (Scandal, Thank You for Smoking, and House of Cards all fall into this admittedly broad category); and finally parodies and satires of DC life (Colbert and Stewart are big, but I’ll also cover SNL’s depiction of politicians from Chevy Chase’s Gerald Ford to Tina Fey’s uncanny depiction of Sarah Palin). I’m trying to avoid a fully straight-forward chronological organization, so I will start with John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln before doubling back to Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

At one time, I was leaning toward teaching only texts that were available on Netflix. When I discovered that Netflix’s selection was too thin for what I needed, I did decide to put personal DVD copies on reserve for a few films, but in making that choice, I ended up leaving out a couple of films (Bob Roberts, in particular) that I think would have worked well. I strongly considered including something like The Parallax View to reflect Watergate-era cynicism, but couldn’t quite work it in. I also considered using JFK as an alternate form of myth-making (to compare to Lincoln), but Oliver Stone’s direction typically gives me a headache. The class starts tomorrow (Tuesday, January 14), so I have time to do some last minute tweaks if you have any suggestions.

Quick pointer to a series of articles discussing Netflix’s decision to conduct a rolling release of their animated children’s series, Turbo: F.A.S.T. Unlike Netflix’s adult dramas, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, in which all episodes of a given season were released simultaneously, Turbo F.A.S.T. episodes will be posted five at a time, in “pods” over the course of several weeks or months. Some of this is connected to the logistics of production–animated episodes take longer to produce–but another factor, according to Netflix, is that children have different viewing habits than adults.

Rather than watching episodes serially in a “binge” pattern, children are more likely to be content rewatching old episodes several times (as many parents know from their stock of well-worn children’s DVDs). In fact, according to a New York Times article on Netflix, children are very much “on-demand” viewers who rarely watch programming according to a broadcast schedule (a point Jason Mittell addressed several years ago in his discussion of his kids’ use of TiVo). The Times article offers several explanations for the bahevior of repeat viewing, arguing that it can be a form of learning, but it’s notable that several VOD services are reporting similar behavior. Amazon has stated that 65% of their most-repeated shows are targeted towards children, suggesting that TV’s role as an “electronic babysitter” has further evolved into an on-demand one, where children can discover or revisit favorite shows at their leisure.

Just a quick pointer to the news that acclaimed independent filmmaker Hal Hartley has announced that he is offering a couple of new perks for people who give to the Kickstarter campaign for his upcoming film, Ned Rifle, the third in a trilogy of films including Henry Fool and Fay Grim. Namely, he is allowing supporters to collect territorial theatrical rights to the film. For $3,000, you can have the rights to Hungary, while Spanish-speaking Latin America would cost $9,000, to name two examples (though rights to Canada, Israel, and many other countries are also available).

So, if you thought you could sell Ned Rifle in Canadian theaters, you’d pay in advance for those rights and then all revenue you collected from ticket sales would be yours. As Scott Macauley reminds us in his Filmmaker Magazine article, plenty of tech vendors already use Kickstarter for these kinds of pre-sale agreements, so why not filmmakers, too? In some ways, I don’t think this is vastly different than the practice of foreign pre-sales that many indie filmmakers have used in the past (see Edward Jay Epstein for the most thorough explanation of this practice). Hartley is still retaining DVD and all other distribution rights (TV, VOD, etc.), but it is a fascinating opportunity for someone who has connections with theaters in a given country or region.

More compelling is Hartley’s frank analysis of movie distribution and how his Kickstarter perks fit within that. He explicitly denies that he he is doing anything “revolutionary” here and also suggests that he isn’t trying “buck” the theatrical system that had existed. Instead, he describes this as a continuation of what he has always done: a limited theatrical release that helps to promote other formats, whether a cable TV screening, DVDs, or VOD.

I’ve been bogged down with a bunch of other projects, but given my research on how digital delivery is changing the film and TV industries, I couldn’t ignore the news that Blockbuster Video has announced that it will close its remaining 300 US stores. It’s a stunning fall for the video rental store that, at one time, seemed like one of the dominant forces in home entertainment. Gina Keating’s Netflixed provides one of the more thorough–and convincing–arguments explaining why Blockbuster failed to adopt to digital delivery, so this news is hardly surprising, but it still seems to mark the end of an era.

Like many others, I’ve also been fascinated by the recent debate between Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and others over whether theaters are “killing” the film industry by refusing to go to day-and-date distribution, in which movies would be released to theaters and on VOD (or streaming video) on the same day. Sarandos has backtracked somewhat from the (perceived) suggestion that he was advocating a pure day-and-date model to suggest that he was merely calling for a shorter theatrical window. Still, a number of indie producers have rightfully expressed some qualms about Sarandos’s arguments.

Finally, I’m intrigued by this report from Vulture about a conflict between TV studios, cable channels, and Netflix over how to divide up the rights to specific TV shows. Specifically, TNT and FX are fighting to retain exclusive streaming rights to the entire current seasons of their shows, rather than the current situation where they only have rights to the last five episodes. Given that syndication deals are no longer as lucrative as they used to be, cable channels are looking for alternative forms of programming.

This spring, I’ll be teaching our department’s junior seminar, which I’ll be structuring around the theme of “Primetime Politics.” I’ve written quite a bit in the past about citizen-generated political mashups, online parody videos, and image macros that mix popular culture with political commentary. To some extent, this grew out of a fascination with the debates about how social media tools were opening new forms of political engagement. But more recently, these interests have led me to think about how Washington, D.C. has been depicted in television and film. Washington culture has certainly become the subject of fascination for many TV viewers with shows like Scandal, House of Cards, and Homeland currently attracting enormous attention, while parodies of DC politics (SNL, The Daily Show, and Colbert) also continue to play a vital role in how we think about politics, even to the point that Daily Show appearances can lead to political operatives getting fired.

With that in mind, I’m planning to structure the course around popular culture depictions of Washington, D.C., both past and present. For now, I expect to bracket off most documentaries, like Fahrenheit 9/11, and instead focus on scripted entertainment and will likely focus to some extent on contemporary media, although I’d like to take a look at a few past texts. I’ve generated a longish list of TV and film texts that I’m considering, knowing that I likely won’t be able to show all of them in a 16-week course. I’d welcome suggestions of texts that I might be missing and with the TV series suggestions about specific episodes that you believe might resonate the most. For Scandal, for example, I am strongly considering showing season one, episodes six and seven, which traces a major portion of the “Amanda Tanner affair” plot, while also introducing quite a bit of backstory to the president’s campaign. For The West Wing, I’m considering showing the debate episode (between Matt Santos and Arnold Vinick) and one early episode. Below the break, I’ve listed some of the movies and TV shows that I’m considering and some (very) loose themes to organize them.

Obviously it’s somewhat inaccurate to suggest that we have evolved from a naive faith in Washington to a more skeptical or cynical view (one could hardly be more cynical than Kubrick in Strangelove), and the 1990s introduced a number of polarizing views on (sexual) scandal and the role of media in shaping political perception. K Street and The War Room potentially help to turn DC insiders such as James Carville into “stars,” a situation that eventually inspires Stewart and Colbert’s satirical response to these media narratives. I’m turning over writing an article or even a longer text on some of these issues, so suggestions about both readings and texts (movies, TV shows, and even novels or short stories) would be much appreciated.

I just wanted to point out a new article, “Reboot Cinema,” I contributed to a special “debate” on 3D in the most recent issue of Convergence. My article attempts to match up industry discourse on the value of 3D with promotional materials associated with the practice of “rebooting” popular characters or narratives. I originally wrote the article in response to the new cycle of Spider-Man films starring James Garfield and the end of the Christopher Nolan Batman films, but the industrial strategy of rebooting familiar franchises has certainly continued (as the planned Batman cycle starring Ben Affleck illustrates). That said, 3D has also been promoted, in both industry materials and in films by directors such as James Cameron (Avatar) and Martin Scorsese (Hugo), as a means of “rebooting” cinema itself, of providing audiences with new forms of textual novelty that were seen as reinventing what cinema could do.

I’d encourage everyone to check out the entire issue, though, given the other fantastic writers (Barbara Klinger, Miriam Ross, Francesco Casetti, and others) who participated in this forum.

I’ve been thinking about crowdsourcing and crowdfunding quite a bit lately for a couple of writing projects and have become increasingly fascinated by the techniques people use to ask for funds on sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. For this reason, I’ve become intrigued by the reaction to the spectacular failure of the “Katie Allen is Getting a Life” campaign. As this indieWire article illustrates (see also the Film School Rejects superb takedown), the project has become aligned with “what not to do” when seeking to raise funds.

What’s odd about the Katie Allen campaign is that it seems to have quite a bit going for it, including three talented indie film actresses, but for someone who has expertise on the industry, Linda Stuart’s appeal is otherwise completely tone deaf. Including the actresses’ names in the space for the title makes little sense, and the lack of a video also seems like a missed opportunity, especially given that Thora Birch, Heather Matarazzo, and Jennifer Elise Cox are ostensibly attached to the project. I won’t repeat all of the points raised by the indieWire piece. It’s so astonishingly bad, though, that I have to wonder if Stuart posted this precisely to provide an object lesson on the ways in which directors attempt to pitch their projects to the public.